


Cruel World

by marigoldcrown



Category: Thief (Video Game 2014), Thief (Video Game Original Series), Thief (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Epilepsy, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mental Institutions, Original Character Death(s), Other, Out of Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 15:02:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17645051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marigoldcrown/pseuds/marigoldcrown
Summary: Whilst exploring Moira Asylum for loot and clues about Erin, Garrett comes across someone he initially assumes is one of the many ghosts of the deceased patients who once resided in the "hospital". Only she isn't yet a ghost.





	Cruel World

**Author's Note:**

> yeah garrett is probably a bit ooc in this, but since we all know he does have a soft side, and moira asylum is such a gloomy and depressing level that i thought some fluff and angst would be a good formula for a feelsy fic

If the dust rolling off of the rotten windowpanes was anything to go by, it gave a good estimation of just how long Moira Asylum had been abandoned for. The corridors were so deathly silent, that Garrett would occasionally mistake the echoes of his footsteps rattling along the hallways for someone being in the building. 

He wouldn’t admit it to anyone, not even Basso, and especially not Erin if she were still alive, but the Master Thief was nervous. The air was icy and heavy with damp, and his own breath was so hot in contrast that it made the inside of his mask wet with condensation. So far, he had found no one. Was that better or worse? Of course, people being around raised the potential of being seen. But any sign of human life would have been comforting. A facility that was once so full of activity shouldn’t be the desolate husk that it was now, it was uncomfortably uncanny.

In the odd keyhole, Garrett had sensed the melancholy souls that had once been confined in the claustrophobic cells. For the most part, they appeared as silhouettes, and the Master Thief couldn’t be certain if it was due to his Focus tuning into the Asylum’s past, or his imagination running wild. Most of the locked rooms were in a ransacked state, with the odd bits of silverware either buried beneath stained linens or pried into the wooden window panes, a futile makeshift crowbar. For his own peace of mind, Garrett always closed the door behind him when exploring a cell. 

He knew rationally that no one was there with him. Moira Asylum was hollow. He had no need to glance through the keyholes, because he knew the rooms were empty. And the hallucinations of former patients were not useful. But the keyhole he peered through, belonging to the last door on the left-side of the women’s ward, greeted him with an oddly salty scent. When he focused, brow aligned with the cold metal plate of the lock, his eye fell on the shape of a patient, hazily banging her forehead against the rough surface of the cell wall. The wall remained largely undamaged, but the patient’s skin was dotted with red. It was as if she were decorating the cell, the crimson of roses her choice of colour. Blood dripped down her damp face, sticky in her long tangled hair, mottling her thin petticoat. 

She seemed a little too real. The other visions of previous patients hadn’t seemed so viscous. It was what she began to say that made Garrett more concerned. “Such pleasant blues,” The young lady muttered. “This blue would look so beautiful on my skin. So beautiful on my skin, if I use a pin, and make sure it’s thin, numb it with gin? No, I’ll get sick, I would, I want blue blood, where they stood, that’s good…” The patient spoke in nonsensical half-rhymes, to herself rather than anyone else. Her eyes were somewhat open, unfocused and sunken with no sleep. Her arms were dappled with bruises, some worryingly turning green at the edges, and she scratched at them with bitten nails. 

Was this woman left behind in her cell, when everyone fled?

Garrett leaned a little more firmly on the door, keeping his eye on her, when the wood suddenly creaked. The woman started and glared for a few seconds. She clumsily took a few steps forward to the door, and Garrett held his breath. By the time she got to the door, the keyhole’s view was blocked by the thin cotton of her skirts, and Garrett sensed a pair of hands on the inside of the door. He realised that the woman was pressing herself against it, head to the side to listen out. Her fingernails scratched at the wood, and where the skirt betrayed her skin, Garrett saw more bruises and pinpricks scattered on her calves. She didn’t say anything, but remained still, trying to listen. “Someone’s at the door, Marigold, someone’s at the door, someone’s at the door, Marigold…” She whispered, sniffling. “Open the door then, open the door, let them in, someone’s waiting…” 

Garrett still hadn’t said a word, but his heart was oddly heavy. It wasn’t often that he felt sympathy for a stranger, but the memory of liberating Basso from the Thief Taker General’s clutches had imprinted on him a protective urge. Did this woman remind him of Erin somehow? Garrett wasn’t sure he could simply walk away and continue his search, knowing that this lady was probably very poorly, both physically as well as mentally. She was uncomfortably thin, her petticoat shadowing the gaps between the bones of her ribcage and sifting on her pelvic bone. Her breathing was rattled and broken. When had this woman last received nourishment?  
She was starting to shift into her next delusion, releasing her grip on the door and turning away, still muttering inherently. Garrett took the opportunity to speak before she was too far away to hear.

“I’m here.” 

The woman’s head lifted at the sound and she shambled back to the door. “Someone’s here, Marigold, someone’s here.” 

“Look through the keyhole.”

The woman got to her knees and lowered her head to the small hole. Her unfocused eyes caught sight of the brilliant blue glare of Garrett’s left iris. She blinked and her fingertips touched the edge of the keyhole. 

“Who are you, who are you?”   
“No names are required. I’m more concerned with how long you’ve been here.”

Garrett could see the dried, crusted blood on her face from her treatment of the wall, and how the trails of endless tears had made her cheeks flaky and sore. Her lips were chapped, her face scarred with acne. His heart panged.

She leaned her head against the bolted lock plate, before beginning to repeat her former ministrations on the wall. The door jolted in its frame, as she used her forehead to bang out what could have been Morse code.   
“Miss, please don’t do that.” Garrett felt helpless, trying to get through to her. Fresh blood was beginning to seep from the wound on her head. He had to get in there. Thinking quickly, Garrett reached into his sleeve and pulled free one of the lockpicks. He gently fed it through the keyhole until it jabbed at the woman’s cheek, not hard enough to break the skin, but firmly enough to cause a shock. The patient flung herself back from the door, blinking eyes wide and confused. “The door’s hurting you now, Marigold. The door’s hurting you.” 

She remained seated on the floor while Garrett worked quickly to break open the lock. Upon pushing the door open, he finally laid eyes fully on the poor woman before him. He took his mask down, and knelt before her. His movement piqued her attention.   
“The door won’t hurt you anymore.” Garrett said softly.

“Won’t hurt you anymore.” The lady parroted automatically. She didn’t hit away his arm when he placed a hand on her bony shoulder, the other on her wrist. “I think we should get you out of here.” He reached for the bundle of gauze Basso made him stash in his quiver, insistent from the arrow the Thief Master General had impaled through Garrett’s palm. Retrieving it, he wound a strip around his hand and dabbed at the blood on the woman’s face, before securing a fresh, clean length of bandage around her forehead. If he could get the young lady down to the boat and Basso alive, he could row her back to the City and into the hospital there. She might then have a chance of survival. 

The feather-light touches of Garrett’s hands tying the bandage were almost nurturing, and the patient’s eyes closed at the feel of it with a low exhale. She was beginning to slowly and hazily rock back and forth, as though nodding off while entering her next delusion. Her breathing was becoming more and more heavy and strained. 

With how sickly and frail the patient was, Garrett now wasn’t entirely certain that she would withstand the journey from the Asylum back to the City, especially with how much colder the air was outside and on the seas. It was likely that her organs were already beginning to shut down. Her immune system was already long gone. 

It saddened the Master Thief, but this was beginning to look like another young woman he couldn’t save. But this time, he could at least stay with her. She was clearly so far-gone that any attempts to ground her and snap her out of her starvation-induced hallucinations, and behaviours from her brain’s structure, were useless. But the woman still had the capacity at least to recognise that Garrett was there. He would stay with her. At least then, she wouldn’t die alone. 

Garrett seated himself beside her. “Blue is good when it’s in your blood.” The patient suddenly piped up.   
“Is that so? What colour is your blood.” For the first time, she looked him in the eye, with the faintest glimmer of excitement. “My blood is blue. They give me thorns   
and my skin turns blue.” The Master Thief realised that she was referring to the bruises on her arms and legs when she held them out for him to see. These bruises were likely from the doctors mainlining opium into her body, as they did for many other patients at Moira. Garrett smiled fondly. 

“You’re a garden. The thorns they give you turn into blue roses.”   
“You’re a garden. Do you have blue roses in your blood?”  
“Not right now, but I’ve had my fair share.”  
“Fair share. Fair is fair, fair is fear, fear is here…”

It was almost cathartic to be with her. Garrett told her about his own troubles, and even though he guessed that her mental capacity didn’t stretch as far to understand him, it felt soothing that she listened anyway, often parroting his words as she processed them. The frigid winds rattled the windows of the cell, but it didn’t bother either of them. They were caught up in their little world of talking. 

Unfortunately, as each minute went by, the patient’s health deteriorated. Once or twice she dipped and fell unconscious, and Garrett helped her come round. But it soon got to the point where he had to lean her head against his shoulder, his injured hand on her shoulder to keep her steady. She went on, talking about her gardens, talking about her blues. Her voice became raspy, either from talking so much, or from her strained breathing. She was growing colder, and began trembling.

Garrett glanced towards the window, and found a dirty cotton sheet. He reached for it and pulled it over her shoulders. As she lay her head against his shoulder, he   
soothed her by rubbing circles into her back, fingertips smoothing the rough ends of her hair. He wish he’d done this for Erin. 

“You’re not alone.” The Master Thief told her. “I’m here with you.” He repeated this to her, and she copied his words. They mirrored this sentence back and forth.   
Her breathing became slower and slower, and Garrett thought she’d fallen asleep. And then she began to violently shudder, her breathing ragged while her limbs grew limp and fell heavily to the floor. Saliva dripped from her gasping mouth and watery fluid seeped down her legs from between her thighs. It only lasted for a few seconds, and then she fell silent. 

Basso didn’t expect to see the Master Thief returning to the dock with the bundle he carried in his arms. Whatever it was, it was swaddled in the thin cotton sheet. A pair of ankles dangled from a fold in the sheet, pale and stiff. “Strewth, is that one of them anatomy mannequins? Can’t see ya gettin’ much outta that, Garrett.”  
“You’d be surprised. But she isn’t a mannequin.”  
“She?”

Garrett stepped into the boat, gingerly laying the bundle down. The cloth slipped and revealed the pale face of the patient, eyes shut in a look of peace. “I found her in one of the cells. Still alive.”  
“She was alive in there, all this time, alone?!”  
“She wasn’t for much longer, fortunately. But she also didn’t have much time. I couldn’t let her die alone.”

Basso sat on his haunches and grinned at the Master Thief. “And you say you don’t have a heart, you soft bastard. Still, she’ll be much happier buried in a nice grave in our churchyard than rotting in that godforsaken hellhole. You did good, Garrett.”


End file.
